


but time takes too much

by eudaimon



Series: Women in Combat [1]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 17:38:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More than anything, Nate Fick has always wanted to feel useful and brave. Brad Colbert would find it difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that he realised that he was in love with the best LT he's ever had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but time takes too much

**Author's Note:**

> A universe in which Nate Fick was born a girl and Toni Espera was the first woman to join First Recon, alongside Mary "Tim" Bryan. Originally written for Melkerr @ LJ for the Purple Dove fandom auction.

_and the atmosphere is charged  
in you I trust_

_New Hampshire, 2002_

When she sees Toni Espera being interviewed, it reminds her of Homer, a line that she first read in her dorm room at Dartmouth. She sits there, listening to Espera talk about war and honour and how it feels to be the first female admitted to the hallowed ranks of First Recon, a bonafide Renaissance _Woman_ and she has to get up and find it in the dog-earred copy on the bookshelf above her bed.

_If you are very valiant, it is a god, I think, who gave you this gift._

More than anything, Nate Fick wants to feel useful and brave.

*

_Mesopotamia, 2003_

Walking towards her, he knows that this is going to be bad. She's sitting with Gunny Wynn, her back half to the doorway of her tent. She's not wearing her kevlar and her hair is almost coppery in full sunlight. The back of her neck is tan. These are things which Brad goes to great lengths not to notice. Things that he does notice: that she's the best Lieutenant that he's ever had the privilege to serve under, that she's sharp and clever, that she has some of the best aim that he's ever seen.

She is one of the only things that Brad places complete faith in.

Which doesn't mean that what follows is going to be easy. Still, if talking to Nate is the thing that stops the entire platoon going down over nothing more than Rudy's fucking _espresso_ habit then Brad's not above throwing himself on the LT's mercy.

A thing of which he is assured: Nate loves Bravo just as much as he does.

It is far from comfortable. Nate gets this look on her face when she's pissed off. She doesn't _look_ pissed off...nothing about her face actually really changes. It's something in her stance. Her posture is always straight, but, somehow, she stiffens.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she says.  
He wishes that he was.

*

_On the inside of her kevlar, she writes, 'THE OUTCOME OF THE WAR IS IN OUR HANDS._

*

Safety is relative and his pulse in his mouth and she's on the bridge, out on the bridge in the dark and he catches glimpses of her in the headlights and the tracers and he's never been the praying type, not much, not really, but religion is passed down from mothers to sons and he knows that, from time to time, his Mother has asked God for help.

On the bridge, that night, with everybody shouting and his heart throbbing in his throat, Brad says a prayer for Nate Fick, beautiful and stupid and saving all of their asses, one team at a time in the dark.

His heart throbs in his throat.

*

She knows what some of the men say about her; she's not stupid and she's not deaf, either. Poke and Doc have it just as bad. All three of them shoulder it and get on in different ways; Poke glares, Doc cuts and Nate rises above. She squares her shoulders and does her job and she looks after them all, every last one of them, whether they deserve it or not. She moves through the camp like a shadow, squatting down and talking, cracking jokes, offering comfort. And if she gets weary of overhearing Manimal telling Chaffin just what he'd like to do to the LT _once she's got her ass in the air_ , then there's always Mike, with touches to the shoulder like a brother and there's always Brad Colbert, tall and cerebral, Ice Man, with his smart mouth and the cool look in his eyes that Nate can't always read.

When she comes across Manimal with a bloody mouth and Brad with split knuckles, she thinks that they might have an issue but Doc coolly intercedes.

Weeks later, when she comes across Brad chest deep in a hole about to disarm his second bomb, when she becomes aware of the terrible flutter in her chest, that's when she _knows_ she's got a problem.

She shoulders it.   
She does her job.

*

On their last day in Baghdad, she walks ahead of him, out in the faded afternoon. There's a lot to be said between them but, in the end, they lean against the hood of Brad's humvee and share silence.

A reservist in the distance risks a wolf-whistle. Brad bristles, but Nate just closes her eyes and smiles.

*

_Oceanside, 2003_

Nate's drinking Martinis and Brad finds that he can't take his eyes off her. She's got silver at her throat and heels on with her jeans. Mike leans in to say something and Nate laughs, head falling back, her hair catching the light. Brad watches and then his eyes slip lower and he's watching the swell of her tits against her wifebeater.

Brad groans and leans forward, resting his head on the table.

"What up, Homes?" asks Ray, and Brad can't find the words to explain that, a few feet away, the gorgeous woman who he is completely and utterly in love with is well on her way to shit-faced and, sometime soon, Mike Wynn's going to end up walking her out to his car and, maybe, on the way, she'll stumble and Mike will end up lifting her and it'll kill Brad that it isn't him who's doing that for her.

"Shut the fuck up, Ray," he says, reaching for his beer.

He is not explaining that to Ray. There's no point in talking about it, anyway.  
She outranks him.

*

"I love him, Mike," she says, sitting on the edge of her bed while Mike takes her shoes off and then shoves her into bed, jeans and all. Even drunk, she appreciates that he doesn't taken extra care with her. She's a Marine; she'll make do. "I actually fucking _love_ him. Jesus."

"Sure you do, LT," says Mike, setting a trash-can beside her bed. "And, the way I see it, it's not whether you love him or not that's the issue here: it's how you handle it from here that counts."

He leaves her. During the night, she throws up once into the trash-can.  
By the morning, she forgets telling him about Brad entirely.

*

It's weeks later and he's on the beach with a hangover and Nate's wearing a green bikini with a horse-shoe on parachute cord hanging between her breasts where her dog-tags should be. She's playing in the sand with Poke and Jessica, building an epic sand-castle with shells at the turrets but Brad's watching the slip-slide of Nate's shoulder-blades, the way her short hair spills forward and catches the light. He groans and covers his eyes with his arms.

"What?" says Ray, wearing Elvis sunglasses, with a beer poised halfway to his mouth.

There are probably a million reasons why he should never ever tell anybody about the fact that he's completely in love with Nate Fick, that it started with respect and somehow grew upwards and out and into something entirely different. He doesn't need to talk about the fact that he finds her utterly distracting, sitting there with sand sticking to the back of her thigh and water beaded between her shoulder blades. He doesn't need to think about how she's starting to burn across her shoulders.

He realises that he's been staring.

With the ridiculous shades, it's difficult to know where Ray's looking.

"I mean, c'mon, Brad," he's saying, leaning over the cooler, hooking out another beer for each of them. "There's no shame in it, brother."  
"What the fuck are you talking about, Ray?"

Ray leans forward, holding the beers between his knees as he flips off the caps and then he offers one to Brad.

"Come on, Brad," he says, and this is the other side of Ray, Ray in the middle of the night with the hook humming softly against his shoulder, his eyes wide and watchful and dark. This is the Ray who was the first person that Brad told about Jenny dumping him, this is Ray who he trusts more than any living human being in the world. Ray knows him, and Brad knows that. "You might as well be wearing a sign that says: _I heart Nate Fick_ around your neck, Homes."

He knows better than to argue with Ray on a roll. He just sips his beer instead.

"Question is: do you love her or do you just want to get really, really nasty with her?"  
Watching Gina Espera smooth sunblock into Nate's back, Brad wishes he knew and

*

_Cambridge, MA, 2003_

And he finally knows that night in the bar in Harvard Square when he leans in to kiss her and she stops him with a hand on his chest. She's wearing a black dress and silver at her throat, the first pair of stilettos that he's ever seen her in. Her hair is short and tousled. She's tanned and lovely and he knows that, somewhere, under her clothes, there's a tattoo that says SEMPER FIDELIS.

He thinks that Mike told him that.

He leans in to kiss her and she stops him with a hand on his chest.

"Not now, Brad," she says, and she shakes her head. "Too soon."  
She knocks back the rest of her drink and then she turns and walks away.

So he loves her. And he has no idea what he's supposed to do that with that.  
He stands at the bar, his head cradled in one hand.

He orders another drink.

*

In the morning, she drives him to the airport and he flies back to San Diego.  
In the car, she rests her head on the steering wheel and doesn't cry but wants to.

*

_Cambridge, MA, 2005_.

For one horrible, hanging in time moment, he thinks that she might not be home. In March, the rain in Cambridge is evil and persistent and the shoulders of his jacket are sodden to the touch. In a torn inside pocket, safe from the weather, a letter carefully folded around a photograph.

"Give me a call when you get back. We've got a lot to discuss."

(The photograph had been startling; he was so used to his remembered image of Nate Fick in the desert, MOPP suit, combat boots, her hair slipping across her forehead when she lent across a map sheet with her kevlar buckled on her thigh. In this photograph, though, she wore make-up, her hair ruffled back from her forehead, the straps against her bare shoulders a distinctly delicate shade of green).

He leans his forehead against the door frame and, dimly, he can hear movement in the apartment. His breath catches in his throat; he couldn't even accurately say how long he's been waiting for this.

She opens the door and she stares at him, hair standing up on end, 1st Recon hoody and plaid pyjama pants and he's never seen that particular startled expression on Nate Fick's face before. He hasn't seen her at all in over a year.

"You were supposed to call," she says dumbly.  
She is unbelievably fucking beautiful.

But he's always known that. He's known that since the first time he saw her in the office at Pendleton in khakis and a plain cotton shirt, since the desert, since all of it. He's been in love with Nate for years, but it's only recently tat he's allowed himself to really feel any of it. Because Nate Fick isn't a Marine anymore, and she hasn't been in six months. So everything's different now. He doesn't wait; he's spent enough time pausing. Enough hesitation. He steps in and kisses her, still on the threshold.

Her fingers fist in his shirt, her other hand slipping up to cradle the back of his neck. It's a kiss that spent years in the making.  
It's exactly as good as he would have hoped.

When they disengage, Nate's cheeks are flushed and her lips are damp.

"You're not supposed to be here," she says, but her fingers stay tight in his shirt, and she steps back, letting him in. He shrugs out of his leather jacket and leaves it dripping beside the door. He feels like he doesn't have to explain to her that he couldn't wait; they've both waited long enough.

But she's still pulling away.

“Just.” She licks her bottom lip and smiles. “Sit there.” She points to the long, low leather couch. “That's an order.”

She's already tugging off her hoody, a skinny wife-beater underneath, and he doesn't have the heart to tell her that she doesn't out-rank him anymore.

*

In her bedroom she's got her back to him, still in her pyjamas but with her hoody stripped off. Her bra is black cotton, dark against her tan skin. He goes to her, reaches out with both hands and touches her, his palm sliding against her belly, his mouth against her neck. Her head falls back against her shoulder.

"I told you to wait," she says but she's smiling and he doesn't know how to tell her that he's been waiting for this for too, too long.

She turns in his arms and pushes him backwards towards her bed. He falls back easily and she's pushing out of her pyjamas, sliding across him in black cotton underwear. He reaches behind her and unhooks her bra one handed. He leans up and presses kisses across her bare tits. He feels like there's electric crackling everywhere he touches her.

When he's inside her, it's like he can taste his heartbeat.

They know how to move together but it seems to him like they always did. They always knew each other. They figured out how to read minds.  
Afterwards, he lies with her pressed in against him, her breathing slow and shallow, and his fingers brush the tattoo on her hipbone and he doesn't know how long he'll stay, but he knows that he's not going yet.

In her arms, he surrenders, one hour at a time.

*

On a wall in Cambridge, she writes _I too shall lie in the dust when I am dead, but now let me win noble renown._


End file.
